Living memories of a time past

Mr Harding decided he would try to consolidate some of the ruins at Farina and call on the skills and muscle of other grey nomads to help him.

"I don't use the word restore because that suggests bringing the buildings back to how they used to be, which is impossible," he said.

"But we have cleaned things up, stabilised some buildings, built some protections and, most importantly, put up information and interpretation signs so other visitors will get some understanding of what this town was like."

One of those bitten by the Farina bug was Martin MacLennan, who now takes time off from his bakery business in Adelaide annually and drives the 800 kilometres to Farina.

With help from others, he was able to get the subterranean bakery working again.

The wood-fired oven from the 1890s again is producing bread, cakes and pasties, which are proving popular with tourists.

The sales have raised thousands of dollars to fund more improvements at Farina.

Recently, two original railway carriages were returned to Farina and volunteers built a section of narrow gauge rail track for them to permanently reside in the town.

More than three decades it abandoned Farina, the railway had returned and it was enough to bring tears to the eyes of a grown man.

"If we left it like [it was] our grandchildren would not really have an understanding of what an early inland Australian township was like," Tom Harding said.

"That is our mission, to leave behind the full story of that town and it is working for us and we are having a lot of fun doing it."